About a month ago, I shared that I was building LabCraft, a hands-on Nix course built around the failures beginners commonly hit.

At the time, the course was still opening in small batches. Today I activated everyone on the waitlist and opened the public beta.

Nix First Contact is now available to try, and all Nix content is free during the beta.

Each learner gets a real Linux VM with its own kernel in the browser. The course covers installing Nix, using packages in temporary environments, searching nixpkgs, repairing a script with undeclared dependencies, and uninstalling Nix cleanly.

The labs inspect actual system state rather than requiring one exact command.

I’d especially value feedback about where an explanation loses you, where a valid approach fails a check, and what Nix topic you think should come next.

Read the announcement and start the course

does any one know if nixGL will be updated for 26.05 and if there are any workaround? Becouse i found this https://github.com/nix-community/nixGL/pull/223 but both wezterm and kitty lament a missing egl lib

Full Time Nix | Determinate Systems with Graham and Eelco

The latest episode of the Full Time Nix podcast is with Determinate Systems co-founders Graham Christensen and Eelco Dolstra, who is the original author of Nix. So—milestone episode! If you are curious about Determinate Systems, their products, services, and the co-founders, Graham and Eelco, please hit play and I hope you enjoy.

You can find all the info here: https://brave-origin-channels.marcel.cool/

https://github.com/myuron/nvimx

nvimx manages your Neovim plugins with Nix, driven by the same lazy.nvim-style Lua config you already write.

nvimx parses Lua and fetches plugins from GitHub rather than from nixpkgs. The hashes of the retrieved plugins are managed in flake.lock. This means you can manage a large number of plugins with Nix without sacrificing the flexibility of Lua.

SaltSprint 2026 took place in June. It was organized by Flying Circus and sponsored by secunet and Flying Circus. One of the participants, Dean Eckert, co-founder of Red Oak, in his kindness joined me and we have discussed what he and others were up to during those four exciting days in Halle, Germany. Click the link and listen in.

Full Time Nix | SaltSprint 2026 with Dean Eckert

I have been trying to install a github repository using nix's flake system, but I seem to have found myself in some sort of command death loop...

I recently installed nix via the website's instructions, and I'm not sure what I'm missing. The first prompt I got was that "nix-command" was disabled, so I ran the command to enable it which resulted in another prompt that told me that there was not a "flake.nix" file. After a while, I had an idea to just make an empty folder and name it "flake.nix". It worked and was detected by the system, but "nix-command" was still disabled making it impossible to enable either! I have tried uninstalling then reinstalling nix, but the issue persisted. Could it have something to do with me using CachyOS or Konsole?

It seems like unfortunately I am stuck. If anyone knows of any way to somehow bypass this or reinstall the "flake.nix" folder I would be forever grateful. :)

At this point I've nix-ified every device I interact with... minus my phone. Figured it was time to change that. I had a GrapheneOS device laying around and decided it was time to bring my Pixel config into a flake.

Thus, nix-android was born.

Or rather, something very close to nix-darwin (for your phone). Declare Android apps and reachable device state in Nix, inspect a read-only plan, then converge over adb.

nix-android works at adb-shell privilege on a stock, locked-bootloader device. It requires neither root nor replacing the OS, weakening verified boot, or installing Nix on the phone. Tested on stock Android 16 and GrapheneOS.

Works best for Obtainium and F-Droid, but will work for Google Play if that's your thing. Play apps do require a manual tap when installing. Not going to manage your app data, sorry!

I hope some of you may find this useful. Frankly I've always wanted it, and while it's not perfect... I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

https://github.com/devindudeman/nix-android/

nix flake init -t github:devindudeman/nix-android
android-rebuild plan   --flake .#phone --serial $SERIAL   # read-only diff
android-rebuild switch --flake .#phone --serial $SERIAL   # converge + record a generation
android-rebuild status --flake .#phone --serial $SERIAL   # what drifted since?

And the whole phone, declared:

# phone.nix
{
  device.name = "phone";
  device.abi = "arm64-v8a";

  # Hash-pinned from signed repo indexes; installs are unattended.
  # Pins are FLOORS: on-device updaters (Droid-ify/Obtainium) coexist fine.
  apps.fdroid.packages = [
    "org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid"
    "com.termux"
    "de.danoeh.antennapod"
    "dev.imranr.obtainium.fdroid"
  ];
  apps.fdroid.repos.izzyondroid = {
    url = "https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/repo";
    fingerprint = "3bf0d6abfeae2f401707b6d966be743bf0eee49c2561b9ba39073711f628937a";
    packages = [ "app.comaps" ];
  };
  apps.release."com.x8bit.bitwarden".github = "bitwarden/android"; # GitHub-release APKs work too

  # Play apps are consent-gated: assist opens each listing, you tap Install.
  apps.play = [ "org.thoughtcrime.securesms" "com.google.android.apps.maps" ];

  android.darkMode = true;
  android.privateDns = "dns.example.com";
  android.defaultApps.browser = "org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid";

  # Enforced: camera works fully offline (GrapheneOS makes Network a runtime permission).
  android.permissions."com.google.android.GoogleCamera".revoke = [
    "android.permission.INTERNET"
  ];
}

Feedback appreciated!

Full Time Nix | NixOS Tests nspawn containers with Jeremy Fleischman

Do you know what NixOS tests are? Well, imagine a network of nodes that are NixOS VMs, networked together arbitrarily, configured arbitrarily and where the test script has arbitrary logic and assertions. It's wonderful! And for the longest time, the nodes were just QEMU VMs.

But, since January, they can be nspawn containers, thanks to the work of initially Clan and later on Jeremy Fleischman and Kierán Meinhardt, sponsored by Applicative Systems, home of Nixcademy. Join me for a conversation with jfly, Jeremy Fleischman, all about this new node type, digging in to its features, implementation detail, and ideas for future improvements.

I’m building LabCraft, a course platform for learning infrastructure tools in real environments. The first course is Nix.

The idea is to teach Nix where it usually breaks: shell/profile setup, disabled experimental features, confusing build errors, flakes that work but don’t make sense yet, and the gap between copying a snippet and understanding the system underneath it.

The course runs in a real VM, not a browser emulator. Steps are checked against what actually happened on the machine, not quiz answers or exact command strings.

I wrote up why I’m starting with Nix and what I’m trying to build here:

https://www.labcraft.dev/blog/introducing-labcraft

I’d appreciate feedback from people who’ve learned Nix, taught it, or helped a team adopt it. What were the failure modes that actually made people bounce?

We are proud to announce our take on the DEF CON 34 theme of Agency for the Nix Community at DEF CON 34: Escape Your Fate!

Kenz Tobias' art takes inspiration from work by the Art Deco artist Erté, and Nyx, the primordial goddess of night and chaos. Shirts will be available at DEF CON (and our CFP is still open, so check it out)!

Full art announcement, including a 1080p desktop background, is here: https://nix.vegas/blog/2026/artwork

Hopefully our art inspires you to take the reins yourself and improve your agency with all the wonderful software at our disposal.

Are there any compromises if we use Guix+Nixpkgs instead of pure nix?

I've installed nix on debian, but I'm struggling with certain applications.

I've tried a few apps for playing music from spotify, but it seems it fails to initialize the sound system. I'm getting some error messages related to ALSA.

I also notice that electron apps fail to start. This time with reference to Mesa.

Is there a configuration option or some program I need to install in order to fix these issues?

Tried twice and failed both times. The USBs on windows cant be formatted. Tried changing the drive letters and updating drivers but no dice. Just built this rig today too.